I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?

I find Japanese books quite baffling when I read them in translation. It's only with Haruki Murakami that I find Japanse fiction that I can understand and relate to. He's a very international writer.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

I think it's quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people.

It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.

I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, and maybe even call.